Gambia's 'Smiling Coast' hides local media's grimace

Who would not like to enjoy luxurious beach resorts and quaint fishing
villages on the “Smiling Coast of Africa”? This is the pitch that the Gambian
government made to participants of an international tourism conference last week. In
fact, behind the idyllic facade of a tropical paradise wedged on Africa's
western Atlantic coast is the grimace of Gambia's independent press.

Years of political
censorship and intimidation, arbitrary arrests, repressive media laws and the
unsolved murder of a prominent editor have forced some of the best Gambian
journalists into exile. Those remaining in the country work in fear
and intense self-censorship.

The Africa Travel Association (ATA), which convened its annual world congress in Gambia last week, calculated
that the nation's poor human rights record was not relevant to tourism. “When people plan
their trips they don’t really think about issues of human rights in the
destination country. Things like freedom of speech are not mentioned by trip
advisors. When you travel, you see what you want to see,” ATA Gambia marketing
committee chairman Marcel Hendrickx told CPJ in April.

The government does its best to keep tourists in the dark about Gambia’s
political and social conflicts. In particular, journalists who try to
convey both negative and positive aspects of Gambian tourism are discouraged or
intimidated from publishing such articles. In March for instance, two reporters with the private Daily News, Sana Camara and
Saikou Jammeh, were arrested by Gambia's Tourism Security Unit while on assignment
at the public Palma Rima Beach, and accused of “taking photographs without authorization,” according to the Media Foundation of West Africa. Local sources who declined to be
identified for fear of government reprisals told CPJ that the journalists were
investigating the tourism-related sex trade. For the government,
such reports are clearly undesirable; the two reporters were forced to delete photographs, according to
news accounts.

But President
Jammeh has been less than tranquil about journalists and international
observers in recent years. "The
whole world can go to hell. If I want to ban any newspaper, I will, with good
reason," he said in 2006. "I don't believe
in killing people. I believe in locking you up for the rest of your life,"
he added in response to questions about the unsolved 2004
murder of editor Deyda Hydara.

More recently, he
mocked those seeking justice for Hydara. “Let them go and ask Deyda
Hydara who killed him,”
he said last summer before throwing into prison Gambia Press Union leaders who criticized the
insensitive remarks. Then came a chilling warning to journalists and human rights activists: “So
they think they can hide behind so-called press freedom and violate the law and
get away with it. ... If anybody is caught, he will be severely dealt
with."

Jammeh's
administration has failed to address issues related to its treatment of
journalists and respect for human rights. The Gambian administration is
currently a defendant before a West African human rights court in a case of illegal detention and
torture brought by exiled
editor Musa Saidykhan, whose newspaper was banned in 2006. The government is also resisting an order of the same court calling for its
immediate release of imprisoned journalist "Chief" Ebrima Manneh.
Despite reports of Manneh's sightings in
government custody, a Gambian delegation told the UN Human Rights Council in
March that “the government has investigated his whereabouts, but to no avail.”

Tourism has the potential to improve the lives of the citizens
of this impoverished nation; improving the country’s human rights record would
enhance that effort. The government would reap the benefits of investor and
tourist confidence if a vibrant and independent press were allowed to freely
report on the nation’s complexities.

Comments

Gambia's full potentials can only be realised if the independent press is allowed to operate freely. otherwise every talk of prosperity and development will remain a charade and a big joke. Gambians deserve a lot better which only freedom of expression brings about.

Gambia the smiling coast of Africa? Yes the tourist will continue to go and enjoy the sun,the beach and the sufering and smiling people of the Gambia. Because little did they know that out side the city of Banjul is Africa,s worsth prison.Habouring inocent souls some many years without having the opportunity of appearing in a court of law.
I think the time have come for all peace lovers to begin to sensetise the would be tousists about the poor Human rights condition of that country.
Yaya Dampha Journalist/HRD
Sweden

A government who isn't sensitive to life and dignities of its citizens would care less about the expense it pursues its development goals. For example, how can you think of promoting tourism by deploying armed soldiers and police to arrest, torture and detain young people who are found "loitering on the beach?"

Its time Minister Mass Jobe and her boss Yaya Jammeh realize that this century calls for respect for human rights and dignity as integral part of every development aspirations.